There are three main elements to the game: exploration, puzzles, and gunplay. The exploration element plays out fairly well, as usually there are several branching paths you can take in a level; usually only one leads to the next chapter, while others lead to key items, health or ammo, or occasionally pain and nothing else. To help make this less confusing, the game gives you a map for most of the floors you reach in the hospital, which records locked doors and other such things. One thing it doesn’t record, though, is blocked paths due to furniture, which occurs very often. More than once I looked at my map, wondering "why haven’t I taken this path?", only to go back and remember that it was inaccessible.

The puzzles don’t come into play often, and when they do, they usually require you to go exploring for a certain passcode. Sometimes it’ll be written on the wall, other times it may be a series of riddles; they’re never incredibly difficult, but they manage to shake the game up a little. As a result, the majority of the game involves shooting the various monsters that populate the hospital. This is, fortunately, very entertaining, as each enemy often requires different strategies and weapons, and the game introduces new ones somewhat often while mixing together the old effectively. Not to mention one weapon in particular is incredibly awesome, though despite its being highly powerful it won’t make the game a cakewalk by any means.